In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry became both the first African-American woman to have a play staged on Broadway and the youngest playwright ever to win the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Dealing with themes of poverty, segregation and the meaning of the American Dream for black men and women denied the chance to flourish, her ground-breaking domestic drama A Raisin in the Sun has been hailed as a masterpiece of American theatre, yet remains relatively unfamiliar to UK audiences. 
Seeking to rectify this is director Dawn Walton, currently touring the play with her company Eclipse Theatre. Her production, which arrives at the Belgrade Theatre on 22 March, stars Ashley Zhangazha as Walter Lee Junior, Alisha Bailey as his wife Ruth, Chewing Gum's Susan Wokoma as his sister Beneatha, and Angela Wynter as their mother Lena. Warm and charismatic with a south London accent and a sharp sense of humour, Walton inspires a natural confidence that any show would be safe in her hands, but it's also clear that Hansberry's work is a particular passion for her. 
“I've always known the expression 'a raisin in the sun', and I knew about the film with Sidney Poitier – I think most black families have probably heard of that. But it wasn't until 2001 that I saw a production of the play at the Young Vic, and I was so moved by it, and so shocked that a play from that time could resonate so completely with me, that I decided to go off on a little exploration of Hansberry,” she said. “You can find a lot of her work online, and when I started reading her writing, I was struck by the fact that she's so articulate, so funny and serious at the same time.”
A journalist, poet and political campaigner as well as a playwright, Hansberry died aged just 34, but her achievements in her short time were substantial. As well as speaking out about American civil rights, in her capacity as a writer and editor at Freedom newspaper, she commented on issues of global significance, supporting the Kenyan Mau Mau uprising and the struggle for women's liberation in Egypt, for example. She was vocal on the subject of sexual freedom, and today is generally believed to have been gay. Nina Simone's song “Young, Gifted and Black” was written about her. 
In A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry draws on a subject close to home: the housing covenants that kept black families out of white-only areas in Chicago. As a child, she had watched her father face court proceedings after buying a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the city's South Side. Angry white neighbours attempted to force the family out by taking legal action, leading to the major U.S. Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. In the play, the Younger family receive a $10,000 insurance cheque following the death of the patriarch, Big Walter. When Youngers use the money to buy a house in Clybourne Park, a white resident called Karl Lindner tries to buy them out. 
Angela Wynter explained: “When Lena buys the house in Clybourne Park, the children ask her why she couldn't find one somewhere else, and she tells them that it was the nicest house she found for the least amount of money. At the time, even though black areas were ghettoised, the houses in them actually cost about twice as much. People had to pay out so much more for the most basic things, because the system was deliberately designed to keep the black population poor.”
Unlike the Hansberrys, the Youngers don't face legal action – at least not within the time-frame of the play, but taken in context, there's a sense of uncertainty about what will become of them after they move. 
“At the time, black houses were being firebombed, so they're taking a real gamble,” Wynter continued. “But they're not a fearful family, and it's all about standing up for yourself and knowing that you belong wherever you want to be. Lena says they won't take the money because it would be like admitting that they're not fit to walk on the same earth as the Lindners.”
At the heart of the play, however, are the family's struggles with each other, their disagreements over what to do with the money, and the conflicts that naturally arise from having three generations under the same roof: as well as Walter Lee and the three women, there's also his young son, Travis.
“Walter is working as a chauffeur, and he wants to use the insurance money they've been left to start a liquor store so he can set himself up as a businessman,” said Ashley Zhangazha. “When we meet him at the beginning of the play, he's very frustrated and unfortunately, that often manifests in him taking things out on his family, so he becomes quite a difficult person to be around. This is an age where men are very traditionally masculine, so after his father dies, he feels he has to step up to the plate and provide, and he struggles with that.”
Meanwhile, his sister Beneatha's ambitions are more academic in nature – she'd like some of the money to be set aside for her medical training. Lena just wants the family to have a comfortable home while Ruth is the most content with the way things are. 
“Like all great plays, it's universal,” said Walton. “Everybody understands poverty and ambition, everyone knows what it's like to argue with your brother or your parents, and any parent will know what it's like when their children come home and they have no idea what they're talking about. In this case you've got three generations living in one house, which is something you see happening increasingly in this country today because people can't afford to leave home.” 
Yet for all that, UK productions of the play aren't exactly in abundance. Doesn't it sound like exactly the sort of thing that you'd expect kids to be learning about in schools, or at least in universities?
“It's interesting, isn't it?” said Walton, drily. “There's an American canon used in this country which tends to centre on certain playwrights, and funnily enough, they're all male. Even if you look at the black playwrights people know, Hansberry doesn't really appear. One of the things that we try to do with Eclipse is to look at what the establishment deems “acceptable”, and then we turn the mirror round the other way, and it's astonishing what you find on the other side. We did it before with One Monkey Don't Stop No Show by Don Evans and I hope we're doing it again now with an even greater classic.”
Zhangazha agreed.: “I did know the play, but whenever I've spoken to friends about it, it is interesting how few people know about it. I'm a really big fan of American theatre – Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller, August Wilson – and I think this is really up there with the best American plays of all time, so it's exciting to be introducing people to this amazing piece of work.”
If there's any theatre company perfectly equipped to do this, it's surely Eclipse, whose unique, audience-led approach has already been hugely successful in attracting new people to its shows.
“Eclipse started as an Arts Council initiative which I took on, and I brought with me one very simple idea: I said that I wanted it to be about audiences,” said Walton. “We take shows that deal with the black experience and tour them around the UK, and alongside that, we have an audience development programme, designed to make sure that the people who are usually the last to hear about a production become the first. So far, the result has been that on average, about a third of our audiences are completely new to the venues.”
An impressive achievement, as anyone in the business will tell you, but as far as Walton is concerned, what she's doing ought to be the rule, rather than an exception. 
“Buildings like these and organisations like mine are publicly funded, so I'm quite hard on people who aren't getting it right or even trying to get it right. I think we have a responsibility, and I don't know how you can justify not doing it,” she said. “Things often happen in peaks and troughs in this industry – every now and then there'll be an initiative and suddenly everyone will be talking about something, and then it all dies out because it stops being monitored. Developing audiences is a long-term process and it needs to be consistent.”
This is just one part of what the company is doing however: through her Revolution Mix project, Walton is also on a mission to develop a large body of new writing. 
“Revolution Mix is a big project aiming to work with large numbers of new black British writers. What's unusual about it is that there's so much happening at once – we currently have sixteen writers all developing plays, and we're working in partnership with eleven theatres across the country, which is really exciting. This production actually came out of our Revolution Mix Library. When the writers came in and did their first session with us in Sheffield, everyone brought along a play they were inspired by, and this was my choice.”
Expect to see more soon, then: as one of the eleven partner venues, the Belgrade looks set to play a part in more Revolution Mix projects as they unfold.